Colouring – in Your Home

27.November 2012

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Some of the most prestigious real estate in Malta of yesteryear had them – coloured rooms. The blue room, the red room, the green room….. Each had a specific role and significance within the household and every self-respecting butler referred to such rooms with great aplomb when leading guests to them. Whether the walls were all blue, red or green, or whether the colour was all about the furnishings was usually irrelevant – the definite title usually stuck.

Colour in your property is all about bringing life and harmony into your surroundings. However using jarring colours, too strong colours and disparate colours can create chaos rather than harmony.

The latest trend to add a dash of colour all over that single wall in your particular room, has really taken on locally, and many owners of real estate in Malta are using this trick to add some character to their rooms. This block of solid colour taking permanent residence on a single wall usually mean that all the rest of the room has to blend in around it. Colouring-in walls is a great designer option that creates ambience and gives character to rooms, yet very dark colours generally limit one’s palette and certain ‘difficult’ colours may be very hard to match with like-coloured or contrasting accessories and soft furnishings.

There are certain aspects that should be considered before going ahead and choosing one colour rather than another. The dark/light rule always applies. Dark colours tend to darken rooms and make them look smaller, and vice versa. The trick is to select the best wall on which to paint the dark colour so that the room acquires depth rather than becoming seemingly smaller and more claustrophobic than it potentially is already.

Remember that small rooms will always look much better in light colours and if colour is to be added to a wall, make it a contrasting light colour that sets off white or pastel shades, rather than a stark dark colour that blocks out all else.

There are other ways of colouring-in rooms without compromising eventual changes you might want to impose on spaces. Think wallpaper. There are numerous possibilities here and this niche is certainly well-catered-for on the local market at present. Choose fancy designs that allow compromise whilst adding style. A fancy design that incorporates two or more colours, can allow you to blend plain-coloured furniture and then accommodate with just the occasional dash of colour in the room’s accessories. Multi-coloured wallpaper usually works excellently with plain white furnishings which bring in a fresh and vibrant feel to any room.

Choose texture rather than design and see how this affects the entire room’s character. The benefit of wallpaper is that it can be much simpler to change eventually than a dark painted wall would be. If you have already gone and pasted dark colour on that wall and are now regretting it, you can fix the problem by simply covering it all up with wallpaper and giving your room an instant uplift without much hassle.

This article was written by Marika Azzopardi, a freelance writer and journalist. A frequent contributor to national English language papers and magazines, she writes about a bevy of topics including art, people and life in general. She is also the author of children’s books and short stories, delving into adult fiction from time to time.